15 January 2015

Baidu.com, the largest Chinese search engine, recently released its “2014 China Education Industry Big Data Report”. The report is based on users’ search behaviour in six education sectors: basic/K12 education, language training, overseas studies and immigration, vocational education, online education, and early childhood education. Key relevant findings are below:

• Degree education (37%) and vocational education (30%) are the top two sectors in terms of total search traffic, but online education and early childhood education are seeing the fastest growth. Language training saw a drop in search traffic in 2014.
• Mobile internet use is becoming increasingly popular, particularly in searches related to vocational education. The proportion of users using mobile devices is significantly higher in less-developed areas than it is in China’s major cities.
• Agents make up only 7% of searches related to studying abroad, while searches for foreign educational institutions made up 49% of these searches.
• The US, UK, Canada and Australia are still the top four destination countries by search traffic. Of these destinations, the US is seeing the fastest growth by a substantial margin, but Korea and Japan are growing faster still.

Analysis by Liu Jing, Assistant Director Education Marketing

Digital promotion is already on the agenda for most UK institutions in China, but given the increasingly fierce competition, digital promotion needs to be more segmented and tailored for each course offered by each university. UK institutions should pay particular attention to mobile promotion and the experience of mobile users, especially in the vocational education field and when targeting students from less developed regions of China.

Source: http://www.aieln.com/news/2015/11194.html

Please direct any queries about the China market to liu.jing@britishcouncil.org.cn.